Friday, September 6, 2013

Ohio Living {a ton of tiny updates}

We have been in Ohio almost 2 weeks, and a lot has happened. The first day we were here, which was mainly a travel day, we arrived in Ohio and 10 minutes later I was leaving to take Molly to her first soccer practice. And I feel like life has not really slowed down since then. I am still processing our last day in WI, and trying to find words for how it made us feel, and how it blessed us so much. Once I get those words, I can't wait to share them with you.

Molly has been busy with soccer practice 2 times/week, soccer games starting this weekend {games on Saturday and Sunday}, homeschool art lessons which she loves, and she started tennis lessons last night. Today will also mark one week of homeschooling for us! Homeschooling is something I never really thought we would ever do, but in this time of transition it's what we feel is best for Molly and our family. I truly have enjoyed teaching Molly and watching her learn. It's quite an amazing process. I also love not having the stress in the mornings of getting up and rushing around to get to school on time. I still have fears that I am screwing her up, or she isn't learning everything she needs to, but then I see her excel daily and I am pretty confident that God has gifted us with a pretty smart kid.

Lucy will start preschool next week, and her teacher is pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Okay, okay, her teacher is me. We are doing a curriculum I bought this Spring, it's called GLE {God's Little Explorer's}. Lucy will be learning a Bible story, letter, number, and self help skill each week. It's formatted for 3-4 year olds, but can be adapted to younger or older kids. I am not too stressed about Lucy learning it all since I can totally do the curriculum with her for the next 2 years.

Church planting wise it's going great. Eric has had many meetings in the last 2 weeks with people in the area, and yesterday we attended our network meeting where they raised a substantial amount of money for our plant. It was fun and exciting, and really great to see other people want to be a part of this new thing happening. One guy yesterday gave $3000 out of his own pocket because he has family in Toledo that are not saved, he was a huge blessing to us, and our new church.

Eric and I are working on a separate blog for our new church. Once we get it up and running I will let y'all know and also that is where we will be putting updates and prayer requests from now on. In the meantime though I do have a prayer request for our new church. On September 23 we are having an informational lunch in Toledo. We have invited a ton of people who may be interested in financially partnering with us, and anyone who may be interested in what we are doing. We have so far received mainly positive feedback from those invited, but this meeting is going to be really important for our new church. Eric will be casting vision for our new plant and for the other plants we hope to see happen in Toledo. We don't want to see one new church in Toledo, we want to see a movement of new churches in Toledo. But it all starts with one, so this meeting is really important for people to catch and latch on to the vision.

So far Ohio living has been fun, busy, and great for our little family. We recently bought a bike trailer at a garage sale, so we have been having fun going on family bike rides. We mainly ride to the ice-cream place down the road :) But I feel like it's justified since we do have to ride back home!